THE PUBLIC POLICY OF FREE LEGAL ASSISTANCE AND ACCESS TO CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN BRAZIL

Abstract

Access to justice is one of the fundamental pillars of the Democratic Rule of Law, recognized as an essential human right for the realization of other constitutional guarantees. In Brazil, however, the fulfillment of this right faces structural barriers, especially within the criminal justice system, which is deeply marked by inequality and penal selectivity, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. The public policy of free legal assistance, primarily carried out by the Public Defender’s Office, emerges in this context as an indispensable instrument for promoting social justice and curbing abuses of the State’s punitive power. This article aims to analyze the Public Defender’s Office as a mechanism for ensuring access to criminal justice, examining its role in safeguarding the criminal and procedural rights of defendants in vulnerable situations. The justification for this study lies in the need to deepen the debate on the democratization of the justice system, from the perspective of critical criminology, which views the “lack of resocialization” not as a failure, but as a consequence inherent to a model that uses mass incarceration as a tool of social control. The methodology involves bibliographic and documentary research, with an interdisciplinary approach that articulates constitutional law, criminal procedure, legal sociology, and critical criminology. The analysis of the Public Defender’s performance will allow for an assessment of its challenges and limitations within a punitive system that historically denies or precarizes access to qualified legal defense. The results aim to demonstrate the strategic role of the institution in promoting human dignity and building a more equitable and rights-based criminal justice system.